


Say that I'm heartless, I've just learned to use my heart less

by heavenisalibrary



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 06:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1500623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenisalibrary/pseuds/heavenisalibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She learns quickly that River Song will be the sort of person who pulls the most life she can out of a disaster; she’s still the sort of girl who just wants to get out quickly and with all of her limbs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say that I'm heartless, I've just learned to use my heart less

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: the first time young river feels like river song 
> 
> Idk who you are anon but I loved this prompt so if you have more like it throw them at me whenever you want. :P

She feels like there are too many things crammed into her head, pressing against her skull from the inside and straining to crack it and leak out. She feels like her muscles are too much for her skin and her bones are too much for her muscles and her joints spark like matchsticks when she moves.

She’s regenerated before, but she’s never become someone new. She’s never felt this at odds with her own skin and breath.

The Doctor calls her River and Amy calls her River and Rory calls her River and even strangers she hasn’t met yet from her point of view call her River and she answers to it, automatically, but she doesn’t feel it. Her hands still itch toward the blaster when she gets impatient, the Doctor still has to rein her in hard on adventures because she still thinks like a weapon and not like the great hero the Doctor tells her she is. She learns quickly that River Song will be the sort of person who pulls the most life she can out of a disaster; she’s still the sort of girl who just wants to get out quickly and with all of her limbs. Death doesn’t disturb or frighten her or even make her sad. It’s something she’s grown up with, and sometimes she feels even more alien watching the Doctor regard life with such reverence. 

He tries to explain it to her, and she just tilts her head. Logically, she understands what he’s saying. But she doesn’t feel it.

She doesn’t feel like Melody, either, though. There was a lot of anger in her, before Berlin — she realizes now it was more fear than anger, a muddle of emotions that seem inevitable to her, now, because at the time she hadn’t thought she had a future. Now it sprawls before her, some of it more clear than other parts, and that soothes the parts of her that still want to claw the Doctor’s eyeballs from his head when he looks at her affectionately and bite off each of his fingers when he rests his hand on the small of her back like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.

It’s many months of feeling like a ghost trapped inside a shell of skin and hair and bone and muscle memory that she doesn’t remember acquiring. She’s almost dysphoric — every time she looks in the mirror, she sees River Song, who she doesn’t know at all, who she hears about all the time, but it’s also supposed to be her. It’s an impossible thing to reconcile, she thinks. Sometimes she leaves the Doctor and goes off on her own adventures, but she never does much. Melody would’ve razed empires; River would’ve saved them; she, the in between, the liminal, doesn’t know what to do. She starts to cause trouble and then she eases it away. It’s frustrating and confusing and if the Doctor stumbles upon her halfway through a bottle of wine more often than not, well, he doesn’t say anything.

She doesn’t know how to act around him, because he tells her that her life is her choice, and she knows he tries not to place any expectations upon her, but they’re there whether he knows it or not — in the slight furrow of his brow, the pity in his eyes, the way he stops himself halfway through a sentence so often that it makes her hearts burn. He expects her to be more than Melody, but she doesn’t know how. She doesn’t know if that’s even what she wants. Because she knows she’s more harm to herself than not when she’s alone, she tries to spend time with her parents, but that’s a mess, too, because even if Mels knew that they were her parents, she couldn’t let them know. She knew how to be their friend, but she doesn’t know how to be their daughter, and she sure as hell doesn’t know how to be River Song, which is sometimes who they expect, when she catches them too young.

The Doctor can tell she’s struggling, she knows. Even if she doesn’t know who she is, and even if he only thinks he knows who she is, he can read this face like a book — and if she’s honest, that’s a bit terrifying as well. When he kisses her, his lips are soft, his hands are warm and tender, and he holds her like she’s something precious.

She’s been a child soldier, she’s been a gun for hire, she’s been a time bomb and a weapon of mass destruction and swinging fists and gnashing teeth and clawing nails and gunpowder-spark eyes but she’s never been a person. And what’s more, she’s never been a person whom somebody loved.

That’s the sort of thought that makes her pull out the wine and drink straight from the bottle until she falls asleep.

It takes many weeks, months, years for her to start to look in the mirror and see herself instead of Professor River Song. Her limbs still feel a bit stiff and when she smiles she shows too many teeth, but she slowly settles into the regeneration, but part of her still resists the idea of being River. He speaks the name with such veneration and affection — she’s come a long way since Berlin, but she can’t imagine herself ever earning that sort of sentiment. River’s still an abstract.

Once, she and the Doctor are trapped in the control room on a ship falling slowly but surely out of orbit. There are enemy ships — they don’t really know who the enemy is, all told, they just showed up at the wrong time — surrounding them and as River pores over a monitor she watches the various life support systems pumping oxygen to the furthest reaches of the ship shutting down as the enemy ships fire electromagnetic beams methodically, moving closer and closer to where she and the Doctor are. She taps her fingers thoughtfully, pursing her lips as the Doctor fiddles with some wires to override the autopilot controls so that they can try and save everyone on board.

That’s the first thought that makes her do a double take at her own reasoning — try and save everyone on board. Of course, she and the Doctor were included in that, but years ago she would’ve all but thrown the Doctor over her shoulder and hightailed out of the sinking ship faster than she could blink. She takes a deep breath and refocuses.

"Too big to pilot out of here," the Doctor mutters where he sits, crouched beneath the interface. "Too clunky to at least ensure a crash landing in a deserted area to minimize casualties. Too damaged to repair…"

She sighs and ducks under the console with him, swatting his hand away as he huffs and lets her take over. It’s not for a few minutes that it occurs to her that they might simply lose the damaged parts of the ship and pilot the central bits — the ones they’re in — away, and she immediately discards the thought, and not just because the Doctor wouldn’t like it.

"A-ha!" the Doctor exclaims, jabbing a finger at the display screen. River spares it a quick glance before sighing and going back to her work. "We could use the teleport —"

"I thought of that too," River says, "but the life support’s long gone from the room and even if I could get it back online we’d never get enough people through before we reached critical altitude."

"There must be escape pods —"

"Two, not nearly enough for half the passengers —"

"People are suffocating, right now, River, we can’t waste time bickering —”

"We can’t shove them all into two escape pods either," River snapped. "I’m thinking, honey. Shut up."

He sighs at her again and stomps a foot like a child. She rolls her eyes, reattaching the final two wires before stepping back and joining him to look over the display screen as he flips through various schematics and plans. Her shoulder presses to his and after a moment, one of his hands comes to rest on the small of her back, the other working furiously. She joins him, poring through everything they can access, but she doesn’t lean away from his touch.

"If we reroute the power from the rest of the ship and —"

"— redirect it to the teleportation system —"

"— shouldn’t be terribly difficult, I’m very clever after all and you’re not half bad yourself —"

"Oi!" the Doctor protests, removing his hand from the small of her back so that they can both get to work, but he remains pressed against her side. "You’re rather cheeky for someone in the middle of a near-death experience."

"We have those daily,” she says, even as they work, “and don’t pretend it doesn’t turn you on, just a bit.”

He huffs. Then, sparing a moment to wink at her, “not quite so much as when you’re clever, dear.”

"I’m always clever."

"Alright," he agrees, "when you’re particularly, saving-hundreds-of-people, re-engineering-the-energy-of-an-entire-space-station-with-a-foreign-interface clever.”

"What?" she goads.

He hums his confusion, swatting her hand out of the way so that he can finish shifting the energy field, and she leans over him to work with the display and try and redistribute the oxygen temporarily.

"You said when I’m particularly clever… what?"

"Oh," the Doctor says, his cheeks turning a bit red. "It was in response to what you said before. You know."

"Of course, sweetie," she says as he inputs the final figure. "But I like to hear you say it."

"You’re incorrigible," he grumbles, but he’s grinning as all the numbers and figures they’d set up go through and the ship shakes greatly. He wraps his arms around her, and she holds onto his waist for support and a moment later they’re safely on the planet, surrounded by baffled looking passengers and crew members, a few gasping for air, but all whole and safe and away from the ship.

She looks up at him and grins.

"River Song," he says, cupping her face in his hands, "I could bloody kiss you."

That’s the first moment, she thinks, in her entire life when the use of her new name doesn’t making her suddenly aware of her body and her mind and all of the ways they don’t fit together — in that moment, she is River Song, and so she just lifts a brow and leans up on her tiptoes.

"I’m not stopping you," she says, and when he kisses her, the soft, loving way he touches her, the tenderness with which his lips brush hers doesn’t make her skin crawl at all. She tangles a hand in his hair but doesn’t pull, she sucks his lower lip into her mouth but doesn’t bite. She is completely overwhelmed for the first time in her entire life of being whole and human and loved.

(Luckily, she comes to in time to remember that there was still the matter of the space station hovering over the planet, moments from crashing to the ground. And so River Song and the Doctor save the day.)


End file.
